Yesterday I went ga-ga over Google. I gave them props for saying no to phone companies posing as extortionists. I also predicted that Yahoo, and other companies will follow suite. There was other news circulating at the same time that Google said “Hell, no!” to the US DoJ when they were subpoenaed to provide search results relating to pornography. I hoped that Yahoo et al. would follow suite here too and protect the civil liberties of the search-engine using public. But according to this Slashdot article, AOL, MSN and Yahoo! have all complied. To what extent though, is still unknown.

My view is probably biased, and it’s not because I have a particular affinity for pornography (or certainly not one that I will accept!). From a sociology class that I’ve been taking (Sex, Crime and Violence on the Internet), I’ve learnt that all the hoo-haa surrounding the online porn business is largely propaganda and has little credence. But it is just a wait and watch now. I wonder if Google will surrender. They do, after all, get about 46% of all search traffic, and have recently contracted with AOL to provide their search results as well.